Prevalence of Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence on High-Resolution CT Imaging in Patients without Vestibular or Auditory Abnormalities

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Prior studies of radiologic superior semicircular canal dehiscence have suggested that CT may overcall dehiscence. However, many of those studies were performed before the advent of multichannel helical CT. Furthermore, there are limited data investigating the prevalence of radiologic superior semicircular canal dehiscence in asymptomatic individuals. The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of radiologic superior semicircular canal dehiscence in an asymptomatic population using 64-channel helical CT.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively enrolled 500 consecutive adult patients without symptoms of superior semicircular canal dehiscence who had undergone CT of the temporal bones in the emergency department of a tertiary academic center between February 2012 and June 2017. The superior semicircular canals were evaluated bilaterally by 2 dedicated head and neck radiologists and subjectively classified as either dehiscent or nondehiscent. A secondary group of 110 scans of patients with symptoms consistent with superior semicircular canal dehiscence was similarly interpreted, and the rate of radiologic superior semicircular canal dehiscence was calculated for each group.

RESULTS: Ten of the 500 asymptomatic patients (2.0%; 95% CI, 1.1%–3.6%) had CT evidence of superior semicircular canal dehiscence, compared with 15 of 110 symptomatic patients (13.6%; 95% CI, 7.8%–21.5%). There was excellent interobserver agreement (κ = 0.91).

CONCLUSIONS: Only 2% of asymptomatic patients had radiologic evidence of superior semicircular canal dehiscence on 64–detector row helical CT. This is markedly lower than previous reports and approaches the postmortem rate of asymptomatic superior semicircular canal dehiscence. We therefore recommend that asymptomatic patients with CT evidence of superior semicircular canal dehiscence undergo audiologic evaluation because the rate of false-positive scans is extremely low.